


Do not pity

by etiquettedarling



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:22:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etiquettedarling/pseuds/etiquettedarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caroline watches Episode 98.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do not pity

**Author's Note:**

> So this sort of works both as a stand alone fic and a potential prologue to my other fic 'One of The Rotten Ones'. Enjoy.

Caroline hates that she still watches the videos. Her life would be filled with a lot less strife, a lot less annoyance and a lot less of that burrowing feeling in her stomach if she never even found out they existed.

Yet still she finds herself staring into the screen of her laptop at 9:05 on a Monday morning not entirely sure why she’s typing ‘Lizzie Bennet Diaries’ into the search engine.

She’s  already re watched her most recent appearance close to eight times and quietly wishes that Bing had just stayed at med school like he was supposed to. It’s humiliating enough that he just upped and left without telling anyone (without telling her, his sister, the person who- well that’s just an entirely different story) but she had been left having to bear the brunt of her mother’s annoyance.

Typical Bing. He thought a half hour phone call would be the end of it. Of course, she never really told him otherwise, so it wasn’t entirely his fault.

Shaking the rant from her head Caroline zeros in on the newest video on Lizzie’s channel. She still doesn’t know why she’s watching it.

It occurs to her (as Lizzie is still centered in frame, grinning away and teasing her audience) that she can easily X out of the window. She can assume what’s going to happen (what has already happened really) without having to watch it edited together on screen, she could save herself from feeling like a complete idiot one more time.

She has to know though. She’d much rather be aware of how much she’s ruined everything.

Sometimes Caroline forgets how ridiculously lacking Lizzie can be under pressure. It’s a small victory, and probably the only one she’ll get, so she relishes it.

She’s never been a person to watch things through her hands. Gore, horror, shockingly explicit sex scenes, she’s always stared harder at those on the odd occasion that she watches them just to prove that she can. This is no different.

Their conversation is so stumbling and awkward it makes her want to roll her eyes. If she’s ripping of the band aid by watching this monstrosity unfold then the least they could have done is be concise.

(Later she’ll think about how all of her conversations are a choreographed dance back and fourth with a clearly defined winner and she’ll wonder if that’s where she keeps going wrong)

Even though she knows it’s coming, has known for a long while now, her stomach still drops when Lizzie kisses him for the first time. The stillness between them afterwards isn’t one Caroline’s ever experienced before and immediately she’s hit with a wave of pitifully ravenous envy.

An indignant, childish part of her is screaming ‘how dare they’.

A more spiteful part of her composes a jibe she’s never going to say about how making DIY porn obviously runs in the family.

She mostly just feels quietly unwanted.

She decides then and there she’s never developing a crush again (melodramatic? A little, but there’s an unpleasant fluttering in her chest that’s making her eyes itch and she never wants to feel this way again)

When Darcy mentions her name Caroline grits her teeth and rides it out. Then they kiss again and it’s over.

It’s over.

...

She watches the next two videos as they air as well. Like an idiot.

It occurs to her that she’s never seen Darcy smile like that. It occurs to her that she never even tried to make it happen.

Caroline looks down at her phone, and composes a text.

“I know it might not seem like it, but I am happy for you”

(The thing is, deep down, under layers and layers of resentment, beneath years of friendship and a crush gradually transforming into awkwardness, buried under her initial confusion when Darcy suddenly stopped returning her jibes and suddenly started staring at someone else in a way he’d never even glanced at her, she is)

But she knows how it’ll look if she sends it, and part of her wonders if she should just leave that bridge burnt and crumbling behind her.

She erases the text and goes back to bed.

It’s probably for the best anyway. 


End file.
